I Palemarried a Subjugglator
by Querel
Summary: See, the thing about it is that when you're quadranted with a Highblood, you essentially are a Highblood. The fucking twist was that no one ever decided that there was a perfectly opportune moment to reveal this little detail to me.
1. Chapter 1

See, the thing about it is that when you're quadranted with a Highblood, you essentially _are_ a Highblood. The fucking twist was that no one ever decided that there was a perfectly opportune moment to reveal this little detail to me so when my front door went from keeping me safe in my hive to being a pile of fucking splinters on my floor (and also in my goddamn face) I was a little concerned.

Needless to fucking say, I put up a fight for about three minutes, got punched in the throat and then hauled off without a word to explain why and all I could do was pray humbly to the ground as my face became exceedingly familiar with it. Hello dirt, good morning, sand in my eyesockets, would you please help ease me into death carefully as I consider the massive shitpile my life has been thusfar? What have I got, a fucking useless absentee moirail for whom I would dissect my own bulge and the most spectacular collection of romcoms that any troll has ever been beholden to this side of the fucking galaxy. Eight sweeps of a whole lot of fuckall and a bunch of shitty-ass friends who I'll never get to say goodbye too. Welp, I'd say I meet the measure for satisfaction: stick a tined dining utensil in me because I'm fucking done.

But, nope. Nope, I wasn't massacred or murdered or even tortured—though getting all the goddamn sand out of my eyes was about as blissful as using my nook as a rock polisher—I was tossed into a cramped little apartment in some obscure hivestem, right into the arms of previously mentioned fucking useless absentee moirail.

Still mostly blind and rather haphazardly bandaged up, at first I assumed that I was just chucked headfirst into some stranger until the guards gruffed out, "Here's your boy, Makara. Watch him, 'is eyes are fucked up." I took a breath in and through the unfamiliar stench of disinfectant chemicals and unfamiliar setting-scents, I recognized the pasty perfume of Gamzee's face paint and that ever-present musk of his sweat and ultra-concentrated sopor.

"Best friennnnnd!" he drawled out, pitched a little higher than usual, all while squeezing me with those engorged arms of his. I mean jegus fuck I hadn't been in his arms for a sweep and a half, but I could tell even without seeing that he'd gained pounds of pure muscle. "Aw, now, what'd they up and do to your motherfuckin' eyes, bro? You hangin' in there?"

"Peachy," I snapped. "I was told the damage wouldn't be permanent, but fuck knows if that's true. Dammit, Gamzee, not that I'm not glad to _not_ see you, but what the fuck am I doing here?"

That idiot guffawed at me and patted me on the back, which even though I'm pretty damn sure was an attempt to be gentle, still made my vertebrae crack.

"Dude, I totally went and wrote your name on this paper thing," he started explaining, "and they all them fat cats up top told me that they were gonna bring you in to all up and motherfuckin' give you a job as my right hand bro. Ain't that the most whimsical motherfuckin' thing? Goddamn miracles, bro."

I was groaning but it pretty much just came out as a growl.

"Whenever the fuck I get my eyesight back, I better see a copy of this damn paper so I can know what the fuck it is you signed me up for."

"Naw, bro, it's cool, I got it right here, I'll read." He picked me up and we sat on the sofa and I stayed in his lap while he uncrumpled a paper from his pocket and dictated to me. " 'Registration of Moirailegiance form Alpha sub Sigma: in which any established troll established of the Hemospectrum Royal Subspectrum requisitions permanent, officially sanctioned Moirailegiance with a troll whereby any disability—mental or physical—mutation, or crime has rendered said troll authorized for culling…' "

"…oh no."

"Shoosh. 'This contract guaran-fucking-tees that any troll bound by its endorsement will be kept safe from any probable cause of culling due to the infractions listed in Culling Policy XVII subsection 2, provided that the Royal Subspectrum troll take full responsibility for his or her potentially cullable Moirail and that said Moirail follow set guidelines to assimilate into the Royal's lifetime service.

Designate and sign below' and there goes my name and your name right next to it and it's already got the Imperious Bitch's seal on it n' everythin'. We're set, best friend. Motherfuckin' palebros for life."

He squeezed me close to him even though I was shaking like a waterfall was barreling down on me. Or maybe because I was shaking, who the fuck knows.

"And I can watch over you now," he crooned at me. "You don't have to get your pretty little thinkpan all rattled over being killed no more. You're motherfuckin' safe from them. Forever."

Being violently uprooted and shoved into a lifestyle that I had no idea about and definitely wouldn't have chosen for myself was once thing to raise hell about. But being safe in my moirails arms was enough to keep me shut up for at least as long as it took for us to catch up on cuddling.

It took all night.


	2. Chapter 2

The respiteblock was actually pretty comfortable. Considering that it had been home to a fucking six-foot-nine Highblood—and that wasn't even counting his horns—the ceilings of it were ridiculously tall and the doorways were wide enough to accommodate someone of Gamzee's size doing pirouettes through them if that was what harshwhimsy tickled him best.

I didn't really know this at first. I had to get Gamzee to tell me about it. Because my eyes were still fucked up from being dragged face-first through the sand. The first few days of my uprooted life were spent on my back on the sofa, in complete fucking darkness, while Gamzee took care of me as if I were some newly-hatched wriggler.

"I went and got some of this miracle nonsense to all up and put on your ganderbulbs, palemate."

"…don't ever call me that again, you fucknut, it sounds like you're saying 'pailmate.'"

"What am supposed to call to ya, then?"

"Try my name, for one. Or just stick with your old standards, leave the new ones to die in peace. "

"Sure thing, best friend."

What Gamzee had foisted off some poor medistaff he didn't have a backwards half-assed clue about.

"Read to me what the label says before you go smearing that shit all over me and making me even more of a liability than I already am," I groaned at him. He'd taken the cap off; the sharp smell of chemicals and herbal bitterness nudged into my nostrils leaving a thick taste against my tongue.

"Lessee…says 's a sopor-based ocular soother, good for irritation, fuckin' infections and any other sort of nonsense. See, bro, it's all good. You can trust me."

"Hrmph."

Unwinding the bandages was annoying. They stuck to my eyelids because of all the pus that had oozed up overnight and crusted to the fabric. It tugged at my skin but every time I hissed from the sting, he stopped and waited, going gentler when he started up again.

"Aw, bro, you look like your eyes done had a cordial as fuck greeting with the dirt."

"'s cuz they fucking _did_."

"Better clean you up, then. This potion here should do that too. Keep your pan tilted backwise, aight?"

The drops stung only a little as he dosed them into my eyes, more delicately than I really expected from Gamzee. I was really waiting for the great idiot to just dump the whole fucking thing on my face. It wouldn't have surprised me.

The medicine was a nice change to that scratchy, sticky bandage. The liquid cool and soothing despite how pungent it smelled. Gamzee heavy footsteps went wandering all around the respiteblock while he hummed along some eerie hymn and left me to lie there and wonder how long it was going to take for my eyes to get back to normal. It would take a couple, weeks but at the time I wondered if I'd ever be able to see again.

Gamzee bandaged me up again with new linens and then decided to gangle over to the couch and put my head in his lap. Still humming…running his fingers through my hair and scratching those hard claws against my scalp as gently as he could, which was actually pretty gentle, considering.

"Now, now and now," he sing-songed down at me growling bass tones and I could hear that sloppy ass grin beaming down into my blinded eyes, "tell me all what my best friend has gotten himself up to while I've been off learning the mirthful ways of our lords and subduers?"

"Trying to keep myself as scarce as possible," I grumbled. "The only reason I managed to dodge the E.T.R. was because of Sollux's magnificent gifts with maneuvering through government firewalls. He deleted my file from all the databases. Which leads me to wonder two things."

"Hmm?"

"How the hell those face-fuckers found me and also if Sollux is now going to get his ass handed to him because of me."

"They went to find you cuz I informed them all of the place where you had been habitatin'."

"Oh, well…fine, I guess."

"An' don't have worries 'bout that yellow-dude none. He's much like you in the ways that his quadrantmates 's both in the Royalblood ways."

"Oh…that must be why I haven't heard fuck from him in half a sweep, huh?"

"Must be, might be."

"Is that what happens to me now? I don't even get to talk to anyone now that I'm in the service of the highbloods?"

"Well, bro, we just gotta getcha a husktop for yourself now, don't we?"

"Speaking of which, what happened to yours?"

"Wouldn't ya know, I broke it. Sat on it by accident. Woulda got me a new one but I keep lettin' the thought slip out of my insides. There's so much here, y'know?"

"Whenever we get mine, we'll get one for you too, okay? I know there's probably somebody out there who misses you driveling your fucktarded nonsense at them."

I let out a long sigh and heard Gamzee shooshing me under his breath behind it. His fingers felt really nice in my hair. Every now and then he'd thumb at my horn and it'd make my spine tremble. Fuck, it'd been so long since I'd been piled, I was halfway to purring in less than a second. I'd said to Gamzee the night before, though, I didn't want to do any piling until I could see him again. Didn't keep the guy from teasing me like that paleslut he is. God, I love him.


	3. Chapter 3

After days and days of blindness, during which I was worth fuck all to anyone—almost always horizontal on the couch when I wasn't being spoon-fed by my moirail—I got my eyesight back. Nevermind the fact that I had jagged scars around my eyes and over my eyelids. Gamzee said they were pretty to look at and when he did, I punched him in the arm. Not that it actually made any difference because the fucker is built like a wall of concrete.

I sat on the floor in front of him and undid my bandages as he just twiddled his fingers, tapping them on the carpeted floor while I unwound them from my face.

"You tell your attending staff that the next time they want me somewhere, they can just fucking ask instead of blinding me," I said to him.

"Heheh, you got it, bro."

I peeled my eyelids away from each other and went to wipe the discharge from the corners of my eyes.

"God, that was probably the most annoying few weeks of my life; I have no idea how Terezi even—"

I focused on Gamzee's placated smile for about two seconds before I was busy scoping the rest of him.

"What the— Gamzee, what did you _do_ to yourself?"

What he'd done was essentially mutilate himself. His hair was as disgruntled and unkempt as ever but that was about the only familiar thing about him. The rest of him was changed. His face had developed into strong angles and handsome lines and served to make me incredibly angry at how my own adult molting did nothing to transform my awkwardness into dangerous grace like it had for him.

But that wasn't the thing, it was how his facepaint was different: a terrifying caricature of what it once was, a jagged-fanged motif twisted across his mouth and smeared in crude impressions of claw scratches from the pools of gray around his eyes.

And it was how his horns had been _carved_ into at the bases. Patterns of his own symbol and those of others—I saw my own there, along with all the rest of our friends—and then some other unrecognizable designs that I'm sure had some significance but meant nothing to me.

In the metal jewelry that studded his face: the ring at his nostril that was literally the anchor for a ridiculously gaudy embellished chain that strung back towards his ear only to be hidden in that weedtangle mess on his head. He had them, four studs for each eyebrow, and one I would eventually discover stuck through his goddamn tongue.

"You like my embellishin' beauties?" he asked, all proud of himself. His smile was still as sticky-sweet as it ever was. "Picked 'em all out myself, I did."

"You look like a horrorterror."

"See, that's all bein' the point, palebro," he chuckled. The nose chain tinkled and I realized that sound it what I had been mistaking for something like a necklace or something. "Subjugglators be the scions of fear. So them schoolfeeders say to me 'more scary, more scary,' till they run lowbloods in front of me and get them all to trembling, you dig?"

"This better not mean they're fucking expecting me to buy into all this."

"Bro, you can't be a Subjugglator, you don't got the chucklevoodoos for it."

"So what, then? I just dodder around after you while you swing your clubs through the masses and gouge them through with your nose jewelry?"

"I'm thinkin' morelike you join the Laughsassins and learn you somethin' you always did want." He smiled at me. "Can't be a Threshecutioner no more but Laughsassin ain't that big a step sideways. It's like the same thing, you dig?"

It actually is not even remotely near the same thing, but it wasn't like I had any other possibilities other than just being a normal hive servant and like fuck I was going to do that. I had spent way too much time hiding out in my own hive to pass up an opportunity to be schoolfed on combat like I'd always wanted to.

"So…I don't need the freaky facepaint or the fucking needles through my face or the chisel in my horns or any other of that bullshit?"

"Not unless you want it, bro."

"Like fuck I would."

"They might want you to get some ink, though. Them Laughsassins got black hands, wouldn't you motherfuckin' know it. Cool as all hell."

"Ink."

"Yeah, tattoos, you dig me?"

"Oh god…."

"Shoosh now. Hey, look at me." He put his enormous hands around my face and made me refocus on him. God, he's beautiful.

Was and is and in that moment, even through all the extra bullshit that he had on him, I was so pale for him and that was probably the reason the words, "I wanted to have a ceremony," came sputtering out beneath the mellow indigo of his gaze on me.

"Whassat ya mean?"

God, my face felt like I'd plunged it into my own nook and was just as bulge-blisteringly hot and soaked with my own autoerogenous spewings. Words curled up and died in my throat and left corpses to putrefy there like stinking hunks of flesh and bone and I tried to dodge out of answering only to realize that there wasn't really a good way to rescue myself from that self-imposed tragedy.

"For fuck's—that document means I'm your government sanctioned moirail now, right? In this shit parade for life whether we both like it or not, right?"

"I reckon it does."

"Well I…," I choked again, "I wanted…to…I wanted to have one of those fucking ceremonies. Like in my romcoms, you know? Where the trolls invite all their friends to watch their union and there's fucking cascades of bloodblossoms hanging all around the goddamn ceiling and everyone dresses up really nice and applauds all happy when the moirails have their first newlymated pap for everyone to watch like some fucking exhibitionist play show for the grubforsaken planet to weep their ganderbulbs out at and you would sweep me off my feet and carry me like that all the way to a pile that went halfway up the wall and was covered in the softest goddamn detritus anyone has ever put their shameglobes on and—"

"Whoa, whoa, slow down there, bro, I got all fuzzy-panned 'round the time you started talkin' bout pappin'."

Felt like my pan was melting inside my cranium. I couldn't look at him; I stared at my hands yanking the fibers out of my sweater instead. And fuck, that thing was disgusting, I'd been wearing it for days on end.

"Forget it, it's just stupid wriggler bullshit anyway."

"No, man, you want to like, make it special, right?"

I couldn't really answer. My cheeks burned and my bloodpusher was thundering and my skull hurt. My eyes stung.

"Look, I dunno much about these ceremonials or nothing but if you guide me about it then we can make it happen for us. Right now if you wanted."


End file.
